I’ve been looking at quite a few extraordinary videos on animal behavior.

There is a genre that repeats frequently in the videos: a lion chases and catches a zebra and attacks viciously: biting everywhere and eventually killing the zebra through a bite to the neck.

I'm interrogating here the use of the term “violence.” The lion’s attack on the zebra is an almost operational definition of violence: vicious, furious--and horrific to our human way of thinking.

Of course this behavior is simply the Lion doing his or her thing: surviving by killing an animal to obtain food. This behavior is the result of natural selection and has survival value.

The lion doesn’t hate the zebra or consider the zebra an enemy. Nothing to do with this.

This same term violence applies, for example, to the act of a terrorist who viciously murders an infidel, blows up a restaurant, drives an airplane into the world trade center, etc.

It's obvious that the term violence accurately describes the behavior of the lion and also the behavior of the terrorist.

Thinking in terms of the meaning of these two forms of behavior, however, it seems that they have little to do with one another. The Lion’s violence is rooted in biological instinct and has survival value.

The terrorist’s violence occurs, on the other hand, in the name of an abstract idea or belief system or ideology and has little to do with biology, evolution, survival, etc.

Yet many theorists (Steven Pinker, for example) equate the two. It is common for evolutionary thinkers to conflate violence that has biological roots and survival value--with violence undertaken in the name of an abstract idea or ideology.